Blackguards - Preview @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

In a way, I’m glad that early-2000s-style fantasy RPGs are still kicking about on PC – a game like Blackguards was bread and butter of my reviewing job a decade ago, and I tended to enjoy sitting down with something far too long and involved even if the writing and acting was inevitably terrible. Things are different now though, more so once the glut of Kickstarted ‘old school’ RPGs start to arrive, and we’ve extremely focused fare such as Avernum on one end and mega-glossy Biowarefare on the other, with assorted roguelikes/roguelikelikes lurking somewhere in the far reaches. I really do want a middleground, but not like this.

I know it’s early access, but it’s also just one month from full release. Despite an interesting and uncommonly elaborate combat system, Blackguards feels cheap, stodgy and uncertain of purpose, attempting to make do with one voice actor trying to do a dozen different accents, sloppy translations and a UI about as intuitive as a large hadron collider. It talks and talks and talks and talks and talks, woeful words with hokey, stilted performances, and like a dinner party guest who only has anecdotes about his time selling air compressors in 1974, it thinks if it just keeps talking we’ll somehow become interested.

I think the guy is remembering wrong or doesn't know what he is talking about since the only turn based rpgs that came out in the early 2000's were the games from Troika. The turn based rpg died when Diablo came out (for the most part) and that is one of the reasons why I hate Diablo.

Originally Posted by guenthar
I think the guy is remembering wrong or doesn't know what he is talking about since the only turn based rpgs that came out in the early 2000's were the games from Troika. The turn based rpg died when Diablo came out (for the most part) and that is one of the reasons why I hate Diablo.

Never thought of it that way. Maybe I should start hating Diablo too? Nah, we're getting kind of a renaissance of the turn based RPG's now with all the Kickstarter projects going on.

Bad voice acting? Bad voice acting is what they have in Jagged Alliance: Back in Action. This is pretty decent voice acting. My ears didn't start bleeding at all during that video. The combat looked pretty good, too, though I'd agree with the reviewer that the mouse wheel UI seems annoyingly busy. Anyway, I haven't tried it and haven't looked into it, either, but the video the reviewer so kindly provided as evidence doesn't seem to back up some of the claims the reviewer made, so I'll reserve judgment.

Originally Posted by zahratustra
It does back up his claim that some of the mechanics used are just BAD. His archer just stands there getting clobbered to death because she is out of adventure points for 3 turns…

In the Realms Of Arcania games you had a similar case : If the weight of what one character carried was too much, then the character had nothing more than 3 "action points" left … Not enough for fighting, only for fleeing just a tiny bit …

— “ Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction.“ (E.F.Schumacher, Economist, Source)

Not sure if it's the same case Alrik. She was moving and using her bow until she got knocked down and than stomped on. Than, despite being able to stand up, she was unable to perform any further action.

Originally Posted by BrianOConnell
I haven't played it but is it really an rpg? Sounds more like an adventure game with turn based fighting which would make sense given the developers.

As Hx already mentioned, there is no clear widely accepted definition for "RPG".

Adventure and RPG are closely related though. Three things Daedalic borrowed from adventures are: traveling over the map, dialogs and the static town screens.
Character development is similar to Drakensang, combat is TB and pretty deep. A lot of diversity on the battle maps.

Blackguards doesn't feel like an ultra-hardcore TB RPG. More like an accessible 75%-hardcore game which avoids some time-consuming micromanagement. So purists might be slightly disappointed.

I did say for the most part and I wasn't considering purely tactics games like Fallout Tactics and Silent Storm since they are cheaper to make and more easily get a publisher. So pretty much the only turn-based rpgs that came out after Diablo were from established series which eventually died.

Originally Posted by guenthar
I did say for the most part and I wasn't considering purely tactics games like Fallout Tactics and Silent Storm since they are cheaper to make and more easily get a publisher.

Normally I wouldn't include tactical RPGs either in this context, but since this game appears to basically be one of them, it seemed logical enough.